COURT TO HEAR APPEAL OF MARINE’S CONVICTION

A military appeals court has agreed to hear the case of a Camp Pendleton Marine convicted five years ago of murder and other crimes in Hamdaniya, Iraq, during the height of that country’s insurgency in 2006.

The case of Lawrence Hutchins III, who has already spent 5½ years in a military jail, will go before the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which announced Monday it will hear his case on two issues. The court will decide whether Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus illegally influenced the case, and whether the Naval Criminal Investigative Service violated Hutchins’ constitutional rights.

“We’ve been fighting the political interference for a long time,” said Hutchins’ attorney, Maj. Babu Kaza. “To have the court agree to hear this issue is very gratifying, but it’s also disappointing to me that the court even has to consider this. It’s disappointing both as a judge advocate and also as a commissioned officer.”

The military accused Hutchins of being the ringleader of eight servicemen who plotted to capture and kill a suspected insurgent but ended up murdering an unarmed Iraqi man. He has been demoted from sergeant to private and is currently being incarcerated at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station.

Hutchins originally received an 11-year sentence, although with credits he is scheduled to be released in three years, Kaza said.

Hutchins was imprisoned four years, from May 2006 until June 2010, before his conviction was dismissed by the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Appeals, which determined he did not receive a fair trial because a lawyer was improperly excused from his defense. However, eight months later, Hutchins was sent back to the brig when a higher military appeals court overruled the dismissal. He has been incarcerated ever since.

Of the eight charged in the Hamdaniya case, Hutchins is the only one still imprisoned. The other seven were all released within 18 months, Kaza said.